Brown rat

Rat in a Flowerbox by David Shankbone Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

I wasn't fast enough to get my own picture but at the weekend I saw a brown rat, Rattus norvegicus, hopping about outside the kitchen. Once it caught sight of me it hopped back into the bushes and was gone. 
There are many myths about rats but it is true to say that after humans they are the most widespread mammals on earth. In part they owe this success to their co-dependence on humans. 
Amazingly they have a 95% 1 year mortality, but they make up for this by being able to reproduce when only five weeks old. They can have up to five litters of seven to fourteen per year! Also they are misnamed, not coming from Norway as John Berkenhout thought.
Rattus Norvegicus is of course better known by many as being the title of a great album by The Stranglers. I'd rather have the album in my house than the rat in my garden.

Hedgehog

Erinaceus europaeus by Michael Gäbler. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Abbey came across an Erinaceus europaeus strolling across our lawn the other night. It's the first one we've seen in the garden for five or more years. Somehow a hedgehog always cheers you up. There's something nice and unassuming about them, as well as the fact that they consume many 'pests' in the garden. Unfortunately, but the time she'd shut the chickens away and got her phone it had scurried away into the bushes.
We reflected on how common they seemed to be when we were children. Our own kids have only seen a live hedgehog once and they are now on the Biodiversity Action Plan for the UK as a threatened species, having an estimated decline of around 25% over the last couple of decades.
Furze-pig is a great colloquial name for them. They can make funny noises too.

Common Shrew

Came across this whilst doing the WeBS survey on Friday: a common shrew, Sorex araneus. They are widespread and common, as the name suggests, being one of Europe's commonest mammals. Consequently they feature on the menu of many a predator. They are largely nocturnal to avoid such a culinary fate. They need to consume 2-3x their own mass each day and can starve to death in a few as five hours. They are unable to store sufficient fat to hibernate so are active year-round. I'm not really sure what this one succumbed to.

Dromedary camel

"Camel, NSW, 07.07.2007" by Jjron - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3. 

Most people know that this is a camel, and that there is another camel with two humps. This is the dromedary camel, Camelus dromedarius, which is native to the Middle East and the horn of Africa. It has been widely domesticated in dry regions. The other is the two-humped one, C. bactrianus, which is found in Central Asia.
They both belong to the genus Camelus. The family they belong to is Camelidae and this contains four other species all from South America: llama, alpaca, guanaco, and vicuña. The family is part of the same order as the one sheep belong to: Artiodactyla or even-toed ungulates. 

I'm posting this as we've all just come back from Morocco where we drove from Marrakech out over the High Atlas to Skoura, Zagoura and a night camping (or should I say 'glamping') in the Dunes of Chiggaga.

Unfortunately internet connection was virtually non-existent so I had pre-prepared some posts which I managed to publish from Zagora as a 'batch'. 

More unfortunately I got food poisoning yesterday and still feel very poorly! So this will be all for today and I'll catch up with two tomorrow.

Sheep

Sheep, Ovis aries, are the 'without-which-not' of the South Downs. They created the short turf which, after a couple of hundred years, can contain more flowering plant species in a square metre than any other habitat. If we were all vegetarian for the next three hundred years we would lose a significant portion of our flora! Once ploughed, however, the ecosystem is destroyed. The owner of Offham Down tried to plough his ancient grassland and got more than he bargained for. Amazingly after 'unploughing', it continued happily as before. So much of the Downs was ploughed during the Second World War that this unique habitat is now scarce, with most of it having some kind of protective designation. 
The pond is a 'dew pond'. These are a feature of chalk grassland and were so called because it was believed they were filled by dew: sadly the more prosaic explanation that it's simply rain actually holds true. They were created by hollowing out the chalk and lining it with clay and straw. Their purpose was to provide water for the sheep so it's somewhat ironic to see them now fenced out.
Sheep really took off, so to speak, in medieval times when monasteries made millions out of the wool trade. In the last 100 years the Australians and New Zealanders have done much the same, although wool production in Australia has more than halved since 1990. They are in the same family, Bovidae, as other cloven hooved ruminants such as cattle, antelopes and goats. They started being domesticated from wild mouflons about 10 000 years ago and there are now over 200 recognised breeds. These are Suffolks if I'm not very much mistaken, and not the famous Southdowns bred locally by John Ellman of Glynde.

Red Fox

Fox study 6" by Peter Trimming

The red fox, Vulpes vulpes, is the most widespread member of the order Carnivora. It is also the largest member of the Vulpes genus. It is the third species in this blog on the IUCN  world's most invasive species: points and a huge money prize for anyone who can name the other two! 
It is also the species responsible for the demise of one of our chickens on Sunday.
The carnivores are the most diverse in size of all the mammalian orders, from 25g (Least Weasel) to 5000000g (Southern Elephant Seal).
The reason they get on the list is their shenanigans in Australia (clue to one of the other species on the blog on the list).
We are blessed/cursed by having a pair of foxes resident at the bottom of our neighbour's wild garden, although to be honest if they weren't there, there would be foxes elsewhere in the locality presenting a risk to our chickens.
Most of the anthropomorphic ideas about foxes in our culture stem from the stories about Reynard the Fox, first written down in the twelfth century. His debut in English was, surprise, surprise, in Chaucer's The Nun's Priest's Tale where he appears as 'Rossel'.

Mountain Hare

I did try to post using the Blogger app on my phone, but for some reason it kept refusing to actually publish the posts. Very frustrating.

So here are three species to cover the 1st February to today. I'll do a separate post of each one.

The first one was the mountain hare, or Lepus timidus. We saw a couple of these on our way up Ben Mor on the 1st February. Needless to say I didn't manage to get a good close up with my phone. The clue is in the species name. Even the two dogs didn't manage to get close to them.

This is a picture of near where we saw them. Amazing place to choose as one's ecological niche!

Other names include blue hare, alpine hare, Irish hare, snow hare.

You can tell them from the slightly larger brown hare because they always have a white tail.

Dog

A limited with connection opportunities at the moment as about to venture into the wilds of Scotland. 
Today is the last of the first month and it hasn't been too difficult to find a new species each day. Finding the time to write the posts is a little harder, especially when one gets drawn in to the detail. Thirty-one species isn't going to impress anyone. I'm not entirely confident I'll manage to post over the next few days but will try to find some local species.
This is Scruff - our friends' dog. And he is representative of Canis lupus ssp. familiaris. Those of you with a smattering of the old language will notice that dogs are in fact a subspecies of wolf. Eagle-eyed antipodean friends might notice someone they know in the background. 

Grey Squirrel

Cute little darling or tree rat?

Depends on your attitude to introduced species or your fondness of our indigenous red squirrel Sciurus vulgaris. 

Eastern grey squirrels, Sciurus carolinensis, were introduced from the Eastern USA on several occasions from 1876 to 1929 (Oliver Rackham - The History of the Countryside). Up until that time the red squirrel was the only one you'd have come across. I would be confident to bet that fewer than 1% of people have seen a red squirrel in the wild in the last ten years.

They are in the same phylum and class as us (mammals) but a different order: Rodentia. The family is Sciuridae which contains about 250 species, and the name comes from the ancient greek meaning 'shadow tailed'.

Under English law, if a grey squirrel is trapped it may not be released but must be 'humanely destroyed'. The reasons for the extirpation of the red by the grey are still debated. The grey is more omnivorous than the red, which means it is less likely to suffer food shortages. It is also a carrier of a virus which makes the red squirrels very poorly. It is bigger than the red and could beat it in paw-to-paw combat. But there are anomalies in its spread that mean there must be other ecological mechanisms involved. 

The other interesting thing about squirrels is that they are masters of deception. They cache several thousand items of food each season, usually by burying in the ground. However, if they are being 'watched' by a rival (of the same species or another after the same foodstuff) they will pretend to bury it, whilst in fact hiding it in their mouths and burying it later out of sight of the rival. Or if the rival is unable to climb trees, they will hide it up in a tree. This behaviour begs questions about consciousness and the theory of mind. Discuss.

The large nests that they build in trees are called dreys.

Cat

Felis catus or the domestic cat is today's choice. Start close to home (we do have teasel in the garden) and he happened to be close to hand. He and his twin brother are 16 years old now. That's old for a domestic cat: in the US the mean lifespan is around 12 - 13 years, depending on where you live. Interestingly, feline life -expectancy has increased from fewer than ten years in the 1980s. 
Domestication of wild cats is thought to have occurred with the rise of agriculture in the Middle East and not, as is commonly thought, as part of ancient Egyptian culture.



Although they kill millions of birds in the UK, their impact on total populations of various bird species is still uncertain: the number of cats vs the populations of various species does not suggest a causal link. Having said that, a bell on the cat's collar does reduce its success at taking prey and assuages, to some extent, the conscience of an owner who values local wildlife.

One of the biggest worries in the UK is the effect of interbreeding of feral cats on the Scottish wildcat (Felis silvestris) population, which has been reduced through habitat loss. It is estimated that there are fewer than a hundred remaining in the wild and extinction is extremely likely.

Human

This is finally the first post for a blog conceived several years ago.

Why start it now? Because the first of January is a time for resolving to make changes. And because 2015 will, I hope, see significant change in the way I live my life.

The inspiration for this blog is the realisation that Life is truly a miracle. Until recently I gave little thought to how Life began. The story about organic chemicals forming in the primordial soup from basic atomic ingredients as a result of energy input from the sun/lightening/thermal vents is, when considered carefully, inadequate: amino acids may be necessary but not sufficient for life. Replication is necessary. Something that evolution can gain a purchase upon. 

Other stories remain equally unconvincing. 

Life decreases entropy. Energy is required. 

Was there a 'first Life' which replicated until changes in the progeny resulted in sufficient difference for speciation to have occurred?

It is truly mind-boggling. Does it matter if we are never able to answer this question? In the meantime we are responsible for the loss of Life both in species terms as well as in terms of the number of living things. This is something we can understand but seem unable to do much about. We follow a Malthusian curve.

Does it matter?

In the grand scheme of things, not a bit. The average species lasts around two to three million years. More than 99% of species that have existed are extinct. We will have our time and it will pass. Life will continue regardless.

So here's the plan: to observe and make note of a different living species each day. It's a tall order, a challenge, for me to find the time to do this. I am already pessimistic about my chances of success. But again, it doesn't really matter. I shall do what I can.

My first species is Homo sapiens. (see photo - About Me)